As expected, the Steam Controller has been unveiled as the third announcement from Valve, featuring dual trackpads, a touchscreen and was designed from the ground up to be hackable. The Steam Controller is designed to work with all the games on Steam: past, present and future. In fact, even the older titles in Steam’s catalog that weren’t built to support a controller can use the Steam Controller.
Valve has developed a way to trick those older Steam games into thinking they’re being played with a keyboard and mouse even though the Steam Controller is nothing like either of those things. The main feature on the Steam Controller is a pair of circular trackpads that are driven by the player’s thumbs. Each one features a high-resolution trackpad as its base, allowing the entire surface to act as a button.
But what makes the Steam Controller so revolutionary is the fact that every PC game that was previously only playable with a mouse and keyboard are now accessible in the living room with a controller. Inside the Steam Controller is a new generation of super-precise haptic feedback technology. Since the controller itself lacks thumbsticks, the new haptic feedback technology aims to provide information to the player.
At the center of the Steam Controller is a touchscreen that is backed by a high-resolution screen. It aids in supporting all the games in Steam’s catalog and is also clickable, like a single large button. Players will be able to swipe through pages of actions in games where applicable and when the player touches the controller screen, its display is overlayed on top of the game they’re playing.
In total, there are 16 buttons on the Steam Controller with half of them accessible without requiring the player’s thumbs to be lifted from the trackpads.
As expected, the Steam Controller will work on any version of Steam, which means you won’t necessarily have to purchase a “Steam Machine” in order to use it. The beta controller that will be shipping with the test units to 300 lucky people won’t feature a touchscreen. Instead, there will be four large buttons in place and the controller itself won’t be wireless – but the final production one will be.
So for those that were still helplessly believing that a Half-Life 3 announcement was going to come today, sorry. It’s also worth noting that the official Steam Controller is quite different than the patent Valve filed several years back. It’s amazing how quickly technology and consumers’ needs change.
Source: Steam
